Collecting Stuff: Introduction for GTD

96 thoughts on “How to use Evernote for GTD – Free Video Guide”

It appears the site has been left in an archive mode which is nice rather than disappearing altogether. Does anyone know of a forum for the discussion of the ATB GTD technique? It’s such an awesome system and still works great even with the newest evernote version, I would love to share current experiences with those of us who still use the system day to day.

Seems like nothing has been happening for a year on your site. Evernote has changed and part of what you describe is no longer valid. Are you going to publish an update of your guide ? Do you still have interest for Evernote ?

Thank-you for telling us all what your plans are (even if it is to do something else !)

Just to let you know I attended the Evernote 2014 conference in San Francisco and made a feature request that they seem to be taking seriously.

When using the mac desktop application and creating a link to another note the link to said new note currently does not open in the desktop app but rather in the browser which defeats the usage of the desktop app. This comes in play big time when you’re using the master note concept in ATB, keeping my fingers crossed this gets done.

I have recently bought your book as i am looking for alternative methods for the TSW that i currently use as it seems that it takes too much everyday time to implement it.

My main concern for implementing it, are two problems:

1. Who tag
More specifically i need to find out how to be able to control other’s assigned tasks, that i am responsible for (in TSW they are called who tags). For example if i have about 30 projects with 10 tasks each that 6 coworkers are involved and also about 20 other people from other companies that i weekly need to assign or receive tasks from them, call them, receive/sent emails to them etc… as regards to the number of projects mentioned above, you can easily find out that knowing instantly who has to do what is most crucial to me.
In the TSW method i have used who tags with the name for every one that is involved in the note-task and also the name of the company that this person works for. For example if i have a meeting with Person-A and Person-B from the Company-A, i need to quickly find out what tasks are delayed, what we have discussed in the past etc.
In your implementation of GTD how should i treat the who problem. I really need to find a solution as in the duration of a month i will have about 100 notes with different people, companies, meeting minutes etc…

2. Task hierarchy
Also i cannot really understand your time-hierarchy of tasks. To be more specific, in TSW that i use i have 6 tags for explaining what should be done first and what second, what is on hold, what is waiting for someone/thing etc. If the 90% of my work is done on my computer, how a single @computer tag can help me in order to find out what to do first and what to do next?

Thank you for sharing this valuable information. I have purchased your E-book and read it twice. First time I read the whole thing, second time I knew what was coming/ I am doing, and followed your action steps on eacht chapter.

The hardest part for me is to apply all steps in the right order, for everything, on everyday. Is there some kind of guideline of setting your mind into the “GTD with evernote”-status?
(I hope you understand what I mean, but in other words, I feel I fall back to reading GTD and your Ebook too often)

It takes some practice but after a while, you will master it! Don’t worry about spending more time on GTD and less time on reaching other goals, this is normal when you start out! Give yourself a month to build the new habits, then gradually add in other active projects and goals but keep it lean, you don’t want to multitask too much.

Hello Matt,
How do you prioritize from a list of next Actions – for example, if you have 20 items under @computer – how do you decide which item to pick first – do you use some sort or recommend any special tag for it ?

Thanks so much for the videos!! I’ve been searching for a good way to implement GTD (I’ve been using it on and off for years). This is by far the best method I’ve seen so far, and you’ve explained it very clearly.

yes! and thank you for buying my book! I helped people via Skype and recorded some calls. With their permission and for all my viewers, I am editing it so the content is presented the best way possible! Thanks again.﻿

One idea to consider is to build a flow chart — similar to the approach by David Allen — but showing the flow of information into Evernote — for example step 1 is to move the item into the InBox. Step to is to add tags. then step 3 is to move the note to the Processed notebook.

That’s a great idea and you already understand the core processing, it really is that simple but very efficient and low overhead.
In my upcoming book, I go into greater detail about the information flow for each level of focus: runway, projects, areas of responsibility, vision and purpose.

Hi Matt. I commented a couple of months ago on how great your tag structure is with GTD in EN. A common set of questions, seems to center on the actual mechanics of moving next actions around in the system. Will the book have detailed instructions and examples of how to use the system for everyday task management? I’m hoping so.

Today I am adding things to EN, but they seem to sit there while I continue to make paper lists of things to Get Done today. I would really like to eliminate the scraps of paper and rely on one system…

I have watched all your videos and I like your system better than TSW, but it seems to me that the one common weakness is marking tasks as completed. In a true to-do list application like RTM or Toodledo this is a built-in feature and checking off a task as done just requires clicking a checkbox, at which point the task automatically disappears from all views of folders, lists, contexts, etc. In Evernote I see no such functionality built in. I see you removing context tags, and dragging the completed task to a different place, and removing the project tag, and creating a backlink in the MPN, and this all just seems like too much work. I could see myself doing that when I had just completed a big task, at my desk. But when I am standing in the supermarket looking at my @errands list that contains 25 entries like “buy milk”, “buy rice”, “buy drain cleaner”, I’m not going to go through that nonsense for each one. That has to be a one-click solution to marking something as done.

Hello Matthew, thanks for liking my system better than TSW! Indeed Evernote is not as good for managing tasks compared to RTM or Toodledo. However the added advantage of having a ubiquitous capturing software, next actions, projects and reference material in one software package: Evernote, outweighs this disadvantage in my opinion.

Regarding the example you give, you could just create one note with a line for every item you want to buy with a checkbox, that is how I do it. Also for next actions not linked to a project, you only have to remove and add a tag to complete a todo. For the project next actions, indeed a little more work is involved but here too you can save time with checklists in single notes, like for the shopping list.

You raise an interesting point, supported by what David Allen says at page 39 – completed tasks don’t need to be tracked. However, whether it does or not depend on what the individual is doing. For a lawyer, who has multiple cases/files with the same client, the automatic disappearing completed task would play absolute havoc with subsequent billing. So, yes, there are times when you would need to track a completed task. What was just done for the client would be lost to the wind, Until the professional realized it and implemented a separate system to track these completed tasks. Seems like that would violated the spirit of GTD if not the rules by not having everything in one system.

Looking forward to your book Matt, putting my money on your approach to GTD in EN. I have fallen in love with GTD and Evernote. But I have yet to fully grasp every detail of the concepts and believe all is needed in order to really reap the benefits, so at this moment in time I read/investigate everything GTD and EN I can get my hands on. Kepp up the good work and look forward to your follow up on the videos!

I just finished writing the book, more info soon…. thanks for the cool comment and good luck with your implementation work, I’m sure my book can help you save a lot of time! Once done you’ll reap the benefits for the rest of your life! : )

Hello Matt! Thank you for the good work on these videos.
I am a philosophy teacher and am trying to work up a course for a set of videos, too.
Would you please be so kind and briefly share on a “meta” level some of your experience?
– Software:
What screen-capture software are you using?
What video editing software?
What resolution do you export it for YouTube uploading?
– Hardware:
What kind of video camera do you have?
What is your lighting? – (Your example for a goal in the series!)
What is your sound system?
– Any other tips you might have?
Thanks in advance for taking a moment to help!
PS: What book does the Oswald Chambers quote come from?

Hey Clark, I use camtasia for screen capture and video editing, highly recommended! For lighting I use two work lights with 200w saving bulbs and white frost filter, for sound just a regular computer usb mike. Camera is a 720p flip video 3rd generation. I upload 1280×720 to YouTube. I wish I had a condenser mic, a camera that can correct white balance and record 1080p, so that is what I also recommend. One more tip: prepare the content of your videos thoroughly before recording and try to record as many videos as possible in one session. The quote I found with Google.

Thanks so much!
FYI: Oswald Chambers was a very interesting person… he worked for the YMCA with British soldiers in WW I in Egypt and died there very young.
Literally hundreds of thousands of people around the world read his daily spiritual meditations “My Utmost for His Highest”! Good quote!

Nice videos! I already use Evernote with the GTD processing scheme, but I have some more notebooks than you and my tags are a little out of control right now. So I am reviewing everything. I enjoyed your setup, it seems practical, simple and capable of fully applying the GTD concepts. You inspired me to make some major changes on mine! I’m curious on how you manage tags for the References
Keep up the nice work!
Ariadne from Brazil.

For the reference tags, I try to use keywords instead of tags where possible. I also use list tags if keywords is not an option. Also if you use the system, a lot of reference material will be properly linked to from master project notes. I go into detail about this in my upcoming book. Thanks!

Great stuff here Matt, love your take on GTD on EN. With the iOS 7 release of EN, this system really starts to shine. Would like EN to include nested tags in iOS versions also, but perhaps this will come later. Like you, I am also interested in the scan snap (EN version), so hope a euro shop will open on EN soon. Now, for my comment to you; I love your videos and will also sign up for your upcoming book, but have you contemplated including RSS feed support on your site? I keep checking your site manually for I.e. Video updates, and would really benefit from getting rss notifications on this. Anyways, keep up the good work.

Matt..I found your site over the weekend and am inspired! I have been a fan of the concepts of GTD for many years, it’s just that I have never been able to implement a practical system for managing the systems. The framework of your system seems very logical and well-thought-out.

I also have recognized the power of Evernote but have never implemented it for any purpose. I can see where the two can be very synergistic.

I would like to see more about the actual hands-on implementation…perhaps examples of how the lables are applied on capture and how they are changed as tasks are collected, acted upon, delegated, input received, etc…all the way through to completion where many of the runway tags are removed and the note is “moved” to completed.

I would also like to see how you use the system on a daily basis. For example, how you check in with the system each morning to see what needs attention that day. What are your recommendations on review tactics beyond the weekly review to stay on track through the week?

thanks for the suggestions for future content! Regarding your question for recommendations beyond the weekly review to stay on track through the week, I follow some recommendations from “the power of less”, see the resources page. In the evening, most of the time I get my inboxes to zero. Then I also tag completed next actions. For the next day, I try to identify three “most important tasks” Tasks that I will start the next day with, tasks that bring me closer to a goal or desired outcome for a project. I try to block any distractions and interruptions till those tasks are finished.

Hi Matt,
Nice videos, very clear and professional !
I’m Belgian too. I discovered your blog through google, and could recognize your accent immediately, funny
I’m using Evernote since many years, mostly for reference until now. Recently I started to use it as a task manager too, but I’m struggling, especially as I have about 2500 notes in there!
My tasks are mixed with non-actionable items which is confusing…
Your workflow is very clear so I wanted to implement something similar.
What I did : Because my structure in Evernote was more Notebook based (like Hana), I started with creating a Notebook Stack called “Reference” (besides your Inbox and Processed Notebook), in which I threw all my old Notebooks. So my content is still there but out of the way.
Now I can start with a clean slate.
Next step is setting up the GTD tag structure.
Work in progress…
Thanks,
Beatrice

I just watched all of your videos. I really enjoy your set-up of evernote. I am pretty new to GTD and have been on Evernote for about a year.

I have been looking for a way to integrate the two of them. Your method seemed to really click with me, I am just starting to implement it. I have been researching GTD+Evernote and have read many different methods.

The only thing that is a little stressful for me is that I work mostly in notebooks and it seems like most people including yourself use tags in Evernote when using GTD. So I am starting the reorganizing process (slowly). I am actually struggling a bit with the idea of getting rid of my notebooks, but i think the tags are going to work better.

ok to the real request….

I know you are going to be doing videos on the 5 Stages but what i would love to see is more info on how you tag your reference materials and for you go more into detail on how you use your Area of Focus Tags.

Thank you for taking the time to share this information with us! I look forward to more videos. Wish me luck in my Evernote+GTD adventures!

Hana thanks for commenting, wish you good luck with the notebook/tag transition! yes I forgot to mention it in my last video but reference material is also requested a lot. Don’t worry eventually I’ll cover ALL aspects, including my take on area’s of focus!

Thanks for the explanation (I guess I won’t need the ‘processed’ notebook and will just keep the ‘completed’ tag) and for the tip: the book seems great, and I’m already starting to read Leo’s posts on his Zenhabits blog! Exactly what I need… bless you! Eager to see your next videos… best wishes from Switzerland!

hey Alessandra, there are a couple of differences between “completed tasks” and “processed”. First “completed tasks” is a tag, “processed” is a notebook. Processed contains all notes that are not in the inbox, they are properly tagged and thus “processed” so it contains ALL notes. “Completed tasks” contains only completed next actions, on the runway. If you want to simplify, I definately recommend reading “The Power of Less”, you can find it on the Resources page. Hope this helps…

Thanks again for all your pain and generosity!
Just a question: what is the meaning/importance/need of having a “processed” and/or a “completed (tasks)” notebook? And what is the difference? I “feel”-“guess” what it is but am not REALLY sure…

I don’t really understand the meaning/importance/need of having a “processed” and/or a “completed tasks” notebook … well I suppose that if you’re REALLY, REALLY, REALLY in a VERRY BIG HURRY, you just dump a lot of processed/completed tasks/stuff in those two notebooks, and then do a weekly-monthly review and eventually choose if you keep this or that other note as reference, etc.,for the future…(if you forget, skip, those reviews, the lists will grow and grow, and grow…and you’ll never reference anything, so what’s the purpose, ?! :-))

Can’t you just reference, move that/those note(s) (perhaps merged) to another DEFINITIVE notebook as soon as the task, search, etc. is complete?!

Does it take more time to do THAT than to dump all those notes into the two notebooks (which supposes you’ll have to COME BACK to them and have MORE work to do, digging-AGAIN!!!!- into THOSE EXACT notes and tasks supposed to have been COMPLETED… of which you absolutely wanted to GET RID OF, in the first place! Why?!!!)

I love GTD, it has been and is always very useful, but the more I experience it, the more I feel that David Allen&Co. so much want to organize and “trigger” everything that they make it all much and unecessarily complicated… They should come back to the “essentials”… ! Simplify!

I’m struggling to implement Evernote the best way it will function for me (I have so much backlog! I really have to deal with it, and find the best way to do so!)… it isn’t easy, with all the different models/ideas/advices/experiences etc.etc.. available everywhere…

P.S For your future Ebook. Matt- you should make it personal- as personal as it can be… Don’t just “repeat” (even if it’s repeating your way)…Cut the umbilical cord with all those who inspired you… Make your OWN recipe before sharing something.. otherwise it won’t work

Great job! Very clear, neat and professional… keep going! Very helpful! Thanks a million for the time you spend sharing your experience (wow, I can imagine)… + you have a very pleasant voice- relaxing!

First of all: thank you for your excellent and in depth explanation of your GTD setup within Evernote. I’ve just started using GTD this week, and I’m trying to get a full overview of everything, so sorry for some noob-questions!

What I wanted to ask: say I have a weekly recurring meeting. Now, when I receive a message to read or review something before the meeting, what do you think is best practice to register this in Evernote? Do you make a new project regarding the meeting every week? Hope you can give me some insight on this!

Hi Ronald! yes I think you can consider this meeting as a project. Make sure you set a goal that has to be met to close out the project. For example: write out conclusions of the meeting. Creating next actions where necessary and/or link updated information to existing or new projects. Another way to go about it would be set up the recurring meeting in your agenda and link to the reference material from within your agenda appointment. (copy/paste note link in the appointment) Thanks for commenting!

Love the videos! HUGE help, and by far the best I’ve found on Evernote + GTD! As for future topics, here are some I’d really like to see covered:

1) Daily Review
2) Weekly Review
3) Examples of how you organize Reference materials
4) Examples of how you do various forms of task, project, idea captures — and how you process these
5) How you integrate your mobile devices (e.g. iPhone, iPad) — seems not all functionality is present in mobile interfaces, which might make some things a bit more of a hassle to do on the mobile devices
6) Examples of how you integrate email processing into the system
7) How you manage Waiting Fors (e.g. how often do you check? do you group/tag at all? do you use time stamps in any way?)
8) How you manage “Ticklers” (e.g. do you just rely on followupthen? or do timestamp the note title for your Ticklers in evernote?)

hey Brian thanks for the comment! Thanks for the very specific suggestions for the next videos. I think I’ll first talk about reference material but my goal is to cover ALL the topics you mention. Stay tuned I have videos coming up before the end of the month!

Glad you like the videos, thanks! Indeed “Ctrl-A” on all emails in outlook to send them to evernote would be madness. You have to process one email at a time and either archive them in outlook or in evernote if you want to link them to a project or some other kind of GTD structure. Most important, if they are actionable, they should be on your runway as a next action. It sounds like email is overused in your organisation, I’ve been there, it’s a mess! Maybe Evernote for business or a service like Basecamp would relieve some of the email craziness…

@Matt – first off, I didn’t thank you for your website and posting of these very helpful videos!

Yeah, I’ve seen other videos on this topic of “just highlight all your emails and pop them into Evernote”. Seems like it would quickly make a giant rats nest of the entire system.

The first part of my problem with email is purely volume driven and that my entire team works in a very unstructured way within our organization; we are part of a shared services team– my manager can send me assignments for one of my 10 team members or, I can get a mail from an internal or external stakeholder and assign that to a team member and then my team members who are very senior can take on projects, in addition, I have my own projects. All of these then have dozen(s) of emails in exchange (ref materials which may later require going back and reading fine print/details to determine some root cause stuff). This means that we are a “catch all” team that when everthing else fails, we get called on to help out. This makes a ton of email every day which is answered multiple times and then sort of needs to stay “warm” until i get responses.

In addition there’s the everyday organizational email from social media content in the company — I must get 200+ internal emails per day due to subscription to internal content– need to scan all that stuff for important outliers or announcements/information useful to customers and stakeholders.

Just wondering how to accommodate that — doing a “Ctrl-A” on emails in Outlook and send to Evernote seems like madness.

I mentioned iPhone because my corporate Android is screwed up beyond repair. I hadn’t really seen any value of hte android speech to text until I watched your videos this week and then started messing with speech to text — I’ll now have an iPhone in a cpl weeks, is there a good speech to text and then email app for iPhone?

How do you suggest integration with Outlook and emails where emails contain tons of either reference material or… they are actions themselves which you really don’t want to retype the entire thing to get context?

I have the GTD Add-in for Outlook but I really find it useless since the Reproting Features sort of got “broken” with Outlook 2007 (I now have Outlook 2010). I also have an Android phone and the category integration (even with a 3rd party add-on) is truly frustrating.

The simple tag hierarchy feature is exactly what I would love to have in Outlook (especially for the quick entries on a Mobile device to keep things in sync). This usage of Evernote reminds me very much of Ecco Pro back in the mid-90s.

I would suggest to use the outlook add-in from the Evernote corporation. You can clip any mail to Evernote, and choose the tags and notebooks. It even works with outlook 2013. It’s been a while but I guess it’s installed when you install the Evernote desktop client.

Hi Matt. I really appreciate your tutorials. However, I think it would be helpful for you to remind viewers of your videos to implement your method using the Evernote DESKTOP Client. This makes it much easier to do things like Nest Tags. (I started off using the Web client and had problems.) Maybe this advice is obvious because I’m an Evernote “newbie”, but it could be helpful for your audience. Keep up the good work and I look forward to videos on the Weekly Review and GTD-EN implementations with Calendar programs…. Tim

Tim thanks for the feedback. Indeed everything I show is in the Evernote desktop client for windows. It’s great to get feedback for the next videos, weekly review is coming up. Regarding calendar integration, I hope Evernote will come up with extra features like for the reminders.

Hi Matt, I found your videos very useful – and persuaded me that GTD+evernote is a good way to manage my workflow.

I wonder how you manage recurring tasks or tasks you want to look at after a specific date. The best I have come up with is to put a date at the beginning of the note title then move it to actions on that date.

hey Michael, for recurring reminders I use followupthen.com or google calendar. Not perfect but easy to reference a note by emailing it to followupthen.com or include the evernote note url in the google calendar event. Either way, if there is a note relevant to a recurring task, I also tag it with “recurring tasks” tag. If you use gmail, I can also recommend Boomerang.

I have a suggestion / request that is similar to @Jim in that I’d like to see use cases: e.g. what you do when you get a phone call, when you think of something you’d like to do that’s on your bucket list, when you want to store information about a client (but don’t have any action to take), things like that.

Hi there, thanks for those videos. I don’t use Evernote for tasks. It becomes a bit complicated, just to see what tasks to take care of. I find that what works best (for me at least), is to use a dedicated task manager application that stays simple : Reminder for Apple users only, or a cross plateform such as Wunderlist. Evernote on the other hand is great for having ALL the reference material data, and the project material.

I’d suggest an overview video of a couple of things during your day:
1. Processing a single to do item into the system, how it gets tagged. Maybe an email, phone call?
2. Completing the to do item, how the tags get changed.
In other words, quickly go through the collect, process, organize, do process.
3. Also how do you do the weekly review on this system?

yes I’m aware of TSW and they sure have a very well written out system for GTD in Evernote.
It’s been a while since I’ve watched some of their videos.. A solid system, but I wanted to have something closer to David Allens Book.
And now you’ve mentioned it, I’m going to have another look at their videos 😉 Thanks for commenting!

Thank you Matt for taking the time to help us out using Evernote for GTD. Following your examples are great. I will continue to watch and re-watch your last videos to get more understanding. I hope you are leading up to a guide book for purchase. I will be one of the first to buy if you do.

Hey Matt. Thanks for sharing these videos – this is very good work!
IT would be great if you could publish the transcript for the last two videos as well. For a non native speaker you are sometimes difficult to understand.

Hey Matt Was looking for that next piece that would help me understand GTD better and then I found your videos – easy to understand – easy to find on youtube – easy to follow along – good to hear you’re having success with the system – I’m really looking forward to making it all work 😉 Keep the content flowing!

Hi there, fantastic tutorials on setting up GTD it’s great you’ve shared your experiences of managing within Evernote. I just finished the book and about to re-read before starting but will return here to review again.

Thank you for these videos! I am in the process of implementing GTD in Evernote! I am looking for help with save searches and how you use them with your setup! Thanks again! These videos have been extremely helpful!

This has been extremely helpful. Thanks for sharing your system. I have been struggling with GTD because it is easier for me to learn by seeing someone else do it. Your the first person I have found who is using this style of teaching this Time Management System.
I can’t wait for the next video.
Thanks again.

eBook

Subscribe

Evernote Premium One Month Free

GET NOTIFIED

Update : Matt is preparing for a site update. New videos and a forum for book owners will become available. Leave your name and email below to get notified when new videos, blog posts or site functionality becomes available.